By the late 18th century in France and
Germany, literary taste began to turn from classical and neoclassical
conventions. The generation of revolution and wars, of stress
and upheaval had produced doubts on the security of the age of
reason. Doubts and pessimism now challenged the hope and optimism
of the 18th century. Men felt a deepened concern for the metaphysical
problems of existence, death, and eternity. It was in this setting
that Romanticism was born.

Origins
Romanticism was a literary movement that swept through virtually
every country of Europe, the United States, and Latin America
that lasted from about 1750 to 1870. However, the Romantic Movement
did not reach France until the1820's. Romanticism's essential
spirit was one of revolt against an established order of things-against
precise rules, laws, dogmas, and formulas that characterized
Classicism in general and late18th-century Neoclassicism in particular.
It praised imagination over reason, emotions over logic, and
intuition over science-making way for a vast body of literature
of great sensibility and passion. In their choice of heroes,
also, the romantic writers replaced the static universal types
of classical 18th-century literature with more complex, idiosyncratic
characters. They became preoccupied with the genius, the hero,
and the exceptional figure in general, and a focus on his passions
and inner struggles and there was an emphasis on the examination
of human personality and its moods and mental potentialities.

The Romantic Style
The term romantic first appeared in 18th-century English and
originally meant "romancelike"-that is, resembling
the fanciful character of medieval
romances. But a mood or movement whose central characteristic
is revolt, and whose stress is on self-expression and individual
uniqueness, does not lend itself to precise definition. Among
the characteristic attitudes of Romanticism were the following:

Libertarianism
Many of the libertarian and abolitionist movements of the late
18th and early 19th centuries were engendered by the romantic
philosophy-the desire to be free of convention and tyranny, and
the new emphasis on the rights and dignity of the individual.
Just as the insistence on rational, formal, and conventional
subject matter that had typified neoclassicism was reversed,
the authoritarian regimes that had encouraged and sustained neoclassicism
in the arts were inevitably subjected to popular revolutions.
The general romantic's dissatisfaction with the organization
of society was often channeled into specific criticism of the
Bougeois society and the feeling of oppression was frequently
expressed in poetry. Political and social causes became dominant
themes in romantic poetry and prose throughout France and other
parts of Europe, producing many vital human documents that are
still pertinent.

Romanticism stresses on self-expression
and individual uniqueness that does not lend itself to precise
definition. Romantics believed that men and women ought to be
guided by warm emotions rather than the cold abstract rules and
rituals established by Bourgeois
society. The bourgeois, who promoted, defended, and openly profited
by the Revolution of 1830, brought with them, when they rose
to power, certain social customs. No doubt all the Romantics
would have furiously denied that they were bourgeois, and many
of them would indignantly have repudiated Napoleon III, rather
than declare allegience to whom Victor Hugo went into exile for
18 years. In the period of its most active fermentation, the
Romantic Movement was nothing more than a protest against bourgeois
conventions, bourgeois society and morality. To be extreme
and flamboyant and unusual and violent even at the risk of
becoming grotesque was the desire of every young Romantic. The
Romantics were, in fact, bourgeois origins, who were trying hard
to escape from their own shadows.

Nature
The Romantic association of nature and spirit expressed itself
in one of two ways. The landscape was, on one hand regarded as
an extension of the human personality, capable of sympathy with
man's emotional state. On other hand, nature was regarded as
a vehicle for spirit just as man; the breath of God fills both
man and the earth. (Shroder, 80).
Delight in unspoiled scenery and in the (presumably) innocent
life of rural dwellers was a popular literary theme. Often combined
with this feeling for rural life is a generalized romantic melancholy,
a sense that change is imminent and that a way of life is being
threatened.

The Lure of the Exotic
In the spirit of their new freedom, romantic writers in all cultures
expanded their imaginary horizons spatially and chronologically.
They turned back to the Middle Ages (12th century to 15th century)
for themes and settings and had an obsessive interest in folk
culture, national and ethnic cultural origins. They found delight
notions of romantic love, mystery
and superstition, and placed an emphasis upon imagination as
a gateway to transcendent experience and spiritual truth.

The Decline of Romanticism
By about the middle of the 19th century, romanticism began to
give way to new literary movements: the Parnassians and the symbolist
movement in poetry, and realism and naturalism.